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Mark Trail, 11/15/08

As a special gift to all of us, because we’ve been so good, Mark Trail is extending the Magical Moment of Fisticuffs for us for another day’s worth of punchy bliss. In today’s panel one, we seem to be seeing the same frozen-in-amber post-punch moment depicted in yesterday’s panel three, but from a different angle; however, Mark’s bellowed dialog has gone from passably bad-ass (“DOES THIS CONVINCE YOU?”) to stilted run-through-the-automated-translator-from-who-knows-what (“THIS LITTLE CONTEST OF YOURS IS UNLAWFUL”). The question is: did Mark have time to shout both of these things at Mr. Rabbit (or whatever his name is) as he tumbled slowly back into the murky swamp water? Or did Rabbit pop back up like a Weeble-Wobble sometime between yesterday and today, giving Mark a chance to lay down another punch and get in another awkward little bon mot?

The rest is no less delightful for being par for the course: Mark admonishes the gathered off-camera yokels, who sit by and do nothing, then breaks Sneaky’s chains with his bare hands and carries him off to safety. For the sake of Mark’s ego, I hope that the adorable raccoon waits until they’re out his backwoods tormentors’ sight before launching his entirely unprovoked attack on Mark’s eyes.

You know, every once in a while I say to myself, “Oh, the Herb-and-Jamaal-is-hilariously-nonspecific bit is getting old,” but then the strip goes and gets even more hilariously nonspecific. In today’s panel one, Jamaal ensures that those reading this strip in an anthology published in the middle of the 21st century will be able to relate the joke to their own experiences during the Great Disco Revival of the 2030s.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/15/08

Considering that this backwoods medico is asking our hero if he’s bothered by the sight of blood and advancing on him with what appears to be a scalpel, Snuffy Smith looks awfully chipper. My first guess was that the doctor assumes (correctly) that Snuffy would not be missed if he were to be sliced up and his organs harvested, but then I realized that nobody would want his moonshine-drenched kidneys or hog-fat-choked heart.

Apartment 3-G, 11/15/08

After a tragic romance with a brooding, no-talent, junkie urbanite, it’s not surprising that Lu Ann wants to hop into the arms of a fresh-faced Dakotan. Soon, though, she’ll learn that rural folk have drug problems too, with Cody addicted to trailer-made meth — or, as the locals call it, “prairie dope.”

For Better Or For Worse, 11/15/08

Yes, who said newspapers would become obsolete? Certainly nobody in the late ’70s, when this strip ostensibly takes place.